trust ˈtrəst noun, assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something

Today’s Tuesday Reading, “Don’t Get Gun Shy”, is an essay by Lizz Duke, Senior Systems Analyst and member of the ServiceLink Team at NYU. The essay first appeared as a program reflection in November 2016.

I grew up in a home where apologizing for my wrong actions, for example, taking and hiding my brother’s toys, was required. All that it took to trigger the apology was a stern look from my Mother. As I got older and didn’t have the prompt from my Mother, I want to believe that I either recognized my hurtful behaviors or responded to prompts from the people around me and apologized to the wronged party. However, I know that I must have missed many opportunities when I should have apologized for wrongs both small and large and did not, either because I didn’t know how I’d been offensive, b

As leadership communities grow across our client organizations, we’ve witnessed several interesting approaches to leading leaders. Here are a few noteworthy trends we see in letting leaders spread their wings.

Always on the Stage

We say over and over again “Leaders are always on the stage.” Why? Because someone is always watching. Someone is always taking the leader’s behavior to inform their impression of her or him and as an example of how to behave. Good or bad, it’s OK. We think, if it works for her or him, it’ll work for me; if he or she can get away with it, so can I.

Do you have one?

We’ve all encountered them. The one, or two, or more bad apples on our teams who have little or nothing positive to say about anything, regularly upset and disrupt others, and make work miserable for everyone.

There are informal leaders in every organization. These are the people in the organization who, without formal title or authority, get things done, and done well, show others how to do them, and have a large network interconnecting many people in a variety of teams and organizations across the entire organization. Often we do not even know who these people are nor recognize their importance in our organization’s success or understand the breadth of their networks.

SCARF :: Status, Certainty, Ambiguity, Relatedness, Fairness

In last week’s Tuesday Reading, we introduced the concept that our brains have developed in such a way that we are extremely sensitive to threats from change and ambiguity. We noted how our brains are constantly scanning our environment to detect such threats at a rapid rate. We also noted that if not addressed the result is distraction, anxiety, and fear, followed by poor performance and more aggressive behavior towards colleagues.